Biology 265

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

General Information

• Instructor:
• Lecture:
• Texts: Begon and Mort.; Cockburn

Lecture Topics

• Introduction
  • History of evolutionary ecology: origin of species, modern synthesis, ecological context
  • Characteristics of populations: as units of evolution, life tables, population growth, population fluctuations
• The Biotic Environment
  • Intraspecific competition: density dependence, scramble and contest
  • Interspecific competition I: ecological niche, competitive exclusion, character displacement, competitve release, resource partitioning
  • Interspecific competion II: logistic models
  • Predation I: pattens of abundance, function response
  • Predaation II: refuges, patchiness, mutual interference, models
  • Life history strategies: r and K selection
  • Population regulation: density dependent, density independent, models, territoriality
  • Human population: exponential growth, problems and solutions
• Genetic Diversity
  • Heredity: genotype and phenotype, alleles of genes and dominance, gene interaction, nature versus nurture and heritability
  • Variation: mutation and recombination, Hardy Weinberg, levels of genetic variation, effective population size
  • Gene flow: founder effect, genetic drift
  • Origin and maintenance of variation: mutation-selection balance, balancing selection, antagonistic pleiotropy, fluctuating environments-termporal change
  • Management of rare/endangered species: proximate causes of extinction, Allee effect, inbreeding depression, habitat fragmentation
  • Reasons for sex: recombination and genetic diversity, DNA repair and mutation elimination, habitat heterogeneity and gene/envvironment correlations, hermaphroditism, sex ratio variation
• Selection
  • Constraints on selection: historical constraints, formal constraints, shape and developmental constraints, body size
  • Adaptive landscapes and the shifting balance
  • Units of selection: group and kin selection, selection on species and clades, transposable elements and t-alleles in mice
  • Evolution of social behavior: haplodiploidy, selfish chromosomes in wasps, reasons for being social,
  • eusociality
  • Sexual selection in animals
  • Sexual selection in plants: patterns of distribution and carbon allocation in male and female individuals of dioecious plants
  • Nature of adaptation: interaction between animals and plants and physical environment, environmental
  • tolerance
  • Modeling adaptation: optimization, game theory and ESSs
  • The comparative method: scaling and adaptationist analysis, disentangling phylogeny
  • Coevolution
  • Herbivore evolution: chemical and physical defenses in plants, generalist versus specialist
  • Reproductive effort: allocation of energy and other resources, diapause and dormancy, senescence, selelparity versus iteroparity
  • Speciation: biological species concept, modes of speciation
  • Patterns of speciation: adaptive radiations, patterns in Hawaiian archipelago
• Species Diversity
  • Global patterns of species diversity: measuring diversity, latitudinal gradients, altitudinal gradients, taxon cycles
  • Community structure: reole of competition and predation
  • Role of disturbance on communities: role of instability, habitat size and diversity
  • Island biogeography
  • Extinction
  • Ecosystem patterns: complexity vs. stability
  • Human impact on diversity patterns: introduced species, biocontrol
  • Analysis of diversity patterns: schools of systematics
  • Inferring phylogeny: homology and homoplasy, applications of phylogenetic inference

Laboratory Topics

• Focus Laboratories
  • Human Demography
  • Species Living Together
  • Competiton within a Population
  • Sexual Behavior in hawaiian Drosophilids
  • Physical Adaptations to Harsh Environments
  • Plants, Pollinators, and Pollination
  • Mechanisms to Avoid Herbivory
  • Climate Patterns in Time and Space
• Extensive Laboratories
  • Patterns of Adaptation across the Landscape
  • Environmental Tolerance Across a Coastal Gradient
  • Experimental Assessment of Genetic versus Environmentally-Induced Variability